As an important development force, tourism development profoundly changes the socio-economic form and spatial pattern. On the one hand, rural settlements of world heritage sites contain traditional functions (such as residential function, production function, etc.), on the other hand, tourism consumption gives new development vitality to rural settlements. The potential functions such as cultural heritage innovation and leisure tourism are gradually explored. In the process of tourism development, the rural settlements functional transformation and human adaptability to world heritage sites is an important research content, which has important reference value for understanding the directions of rural settlements transformation and promoting the sustainable development of world heritage. Taking Tangkou, Zhaixi and Shancha villages as the research objects, we integrate the method of participatory rural assessment, GIS technology and remote sensing images, in a microscopic research perspective, apply the house function and tourism-live mixed use to analyze the characteristics and patterns of functional transformation and spatial restructuring, and adopt quantitative and qualitative methods (such as factor analysis, questionnaire interview, etc.) to explore the influencing factors and mechanisms in the three villages. The results suggest that the three villages have different characteristics and patterns in functional transformation and spatial restructuring. Tangkou is characterized by functional dissipative transformation and spatial fragmentation, Zhaixi is characterized by functional modular integration and spatial synergistic succession, and Shancha is characterized by functional self-organizational adaptation and spatial nuclear agglomeration. Accordingly, there are three transformational development models: Tangkou belongs to "in-situ growth" model, Zhaixi belongs to "original-place reconstruction" model and Shancha belongs to "Jingcun symbiosis" model. The interaction of internal and external factors is the supporting force, the initiative of multi-stakeholders is the action force and the demand of tourism market is the driving force for the rural settlement functional transformation and spatial restructuring in world heritage sites. This study could promote the coordinated development of tourism and village construction in Tangkou Town, provide a reference for the sustainable development of rural settlements of world heritage, and further enrich the content of rural transformation in tourism destinations.